Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/archive04

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
  • Archive 1: Discussion completed through May 2005
  • Archive 2: Discussion completed through October 2005
  • Archive 3: Discussion completed through February 2006
  • Archive 4: Discussion completed through August 2006
  • Archive 5: Discussion completed through September 2006
  • Archive 6: Discussion completed through October 2006
  • Archive 7: Discussion completed through November 2006
  • Archive 8: Discussion completed through December 2006

Contents

Manipulating chemical images

A very good way of displaying chemical images on web pages is using Jmol. The use can rotate the image with the mouse. I have been wondering whether we could do this on Wikipedia. It would need the ability to add a line to the web page <HEAD> .. </HEAD> block, install Jmol on the Wikipedia server, and then add a block of code to the page, possible with a template. I have suggested what is required in detail on User talk:Bduke/Workshop.

  • Does this seem a good idea?
  • If so, who do I approach to see whether it is possible? It presumably requires some changes to the MediaWiki code.

Please discuss it here. --Bduke 07:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe we are faced with two questions:
1) Should we use this? Almost, anything is better than what we currently have.
2) Can we use this? The Jmol looks great for websites with simple file structures. (All structures are in a folder called "data".) The Wikimedia file structures are uber-complex. Can Jmol handle this? Will Jmol be interoperable with Wikimedia Commons? Maybe the best place for this discussion would be a technical board on MediaWiki. MetaWiki says to file a feature request in bugzilla.wikimedia.org. I have no idea how to do that. Good luck. ~K 15:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Yes, these are all problems. I'm not sure that structures have to be in "data". My example, which I wrote months ago is, but I think you give the path there. However you have to give a relative path to Jmol.js and that can be a problem. I once had a real problem with Jmol.js in the htdocs space and trying to create a page from the cgi space on the fly. I'll take this slowly (for one reason I'm at a Conference next week). I'll update Jmol on my server machine and I'll ask the Jmol list whether anyone has put Jmol into a wiki page running under MediaWiki. The problem is not restricted to Wikipedia. --Bduke 21:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Something has been done to put Jmol into MediaWiki, but it is not that recent. I'll try to follow it up in a couple of weeks after a Conference in Sydney next week. See MediaWiki article and the link there to Folding@Home article. This link shows that the Jmol developer, Miguel, is interested in it and more recently. There is also this --Bduke 23:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I have now got in contact with those who have worked on this earlier. Nothing has been done since mid-2005. I am about to start understanding that better. I have written Wikipedia:Using Jmol to display molecular models and welcome people who might wish to sign up on that page to help me. It may take a while to get moving. I have also negotiated to try things out on another wiki that uses the same MediaWiki software. The admin of that site is a chemist (indeed a wikipedian chemist) and it will probably be easier to sort out there where stuff has to be installed, before we ask the wikipedia technical folk to help us. --Bduke 10:08, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I have finished setting up the new Jmol Wiki and I have also finished the first fully functional version of the Jmol Extension for MediaWiki. Feel free to post comments and suggestions directly on discussion page of the Extension in the Jmol Wiki. --NicoV 20:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

NicoV has done a wonderfull job with Jmol and MediaWiki. I am trying to get it installed on Wikipedia, but the technical guy I have been in touch with earlier is not responding. He is obviously busy. I'll keep trying next week. I'm on Wikibreak until Monday. --Bduke 21:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Magnesium oxide or Magnesium carbonate

The calk used for weight lifting or gymnastics I used in school was called Magnesia. What I know Magnesium oxide produced by heating Magnesium carbonate. Google shows me gripp calk block made from best italian Magnesium carbonate. Several solid sate chemists postdocs from the Max Plank Institute for solid state chemistry said: Its Magnesia (Magnesium oxid) but we have no written proof. Know I want to ask my fellow wikipedians, if I am wrong or the stuff differs from continent to continent or the article in the wikipedia is already wright.Stone 08:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

No idea about what is used in sports. Magnesia has a Magnesia (disambiguation) page, so the problem apparently already lies in the very definition of the term. I seem to remember the sports-related application reference at magnesium has been changed once (to carbonate, presumably by an athlete). Chemists may not mean the same thing as athletes, have you tried asking this question at a page specific to sports? Femto 13:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC).
At the weight lifting or gymnastics talk page I tried and is still running! But if I go an by this stuff, it should be something definit or indefinit and this will be good to know!Stone 14:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I tried to answer this the first time it turned up, but my reponse doesn't seem to have been recorded. The powder user by weightlifters is the carbonate. It occurs naturally as a mineral in northern Greece, and is the origin of the name magnesium. The oxide is too hygroscopic to be applied to the hands in this type of situation: it would cause more burns from water extraction than from friction, even if it can be tolerated for skin exposure in less extreme situations. Physchim62 (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Than I will have to have a word with my chem teacher and som Prof talking something different. But than a got information to use in the future to get ride of misinformation!--Stone 07:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Templates for molecular structures

Is there a ChemDraw template containing recommended drawing parameters for structure images? DMacks 18:11, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

See User:Rune.welsh/Structures for the settings I use for drawing chemical structures. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 20:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

HSAB concept

It seems this concept has been "forgotten" on wikipedia for a long time and the article has not yet been modified to fit article standards, i am not an expert on inorganic chemistry however i did small edits on the page trying to improving it a little bit. If there is any expert on this field please take a look at the article and improve it (HSAB concept), the page requires urgent expansion. --HappyApple 19:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think "HSAB concept" is the common terminology used for it - then again, I'm not sure what the standard is. I didn't even know it was being called "HSAB concept". This theory is quite useful in transition metal chemistry (especially for qualitative descriptions), but as we can see, there are hardly any articles on transition metals in Wikipedia... --HappyCamper 14:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Can I help?

Hi, I'd like to help out. What do I do to sign up? I've been adding lots of skeletal formulae to compounds' articles recently. Can I add my name to the list of contributors at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry#Participants? User:Benjah-bmm27 16:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please do sign up! I saw your work on diethyl malonate and it's much appreciated. I would suggest taking a look at the worklist and find something you fancy working on. Since you do a lot of work on compounds you might also want to consider signing up for Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals as well, which has quite an active worklist. You'll find the chem people here to be very friendly & supportive. Thanks for your interest, Walkerma 17:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

This is a rather important proposal on which I seek the views of other chemists before I finally agree to nominate myself for the Board. Walkerma has expressed his support but says he is too tied up. Have a read of the proposal and put your thoughts here. If we want to support it, I think we need to support two people for the board. I am willing to be one, but I am a theorist and we would need someone involved with Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals. --Bduke 06:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, you'll definitely get my vote. Thanks, Walkerma 06:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I have to go through your work, but with Walkerma with you there should be no problem! I have not decided yet but there is a goood chance that I will also try to get onto the list. But there should be at least one real chemist on the list ;-), not only theoretical chemists. Promotion and advertising should be done also on other project pages like mathematics physics astronomy and so on. Is there a possibility to do this?
Stone 12:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Go for it - both nominating and putting stuff on other pages. Could we replace "real" by "experimental". It makes it sound like I'm an "imaginary" chemist? ;-) --Bduke 02:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Yep, you'd also get my vote. Sure, we should check credentials/pubs, but 2-Pyridone shows your knowledge, and you have continued to contribute to Wikipedia. We also need someone who has something more than coffee in their lab! (Sorry, Bduke, couldn't resist!). Walkerma 05:30, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
(Bduke should not resist!). My postdoctoral was all "imaginary" and part of my phd was more unreal than experimental! And at work we made this joke nearly everyday, all had fun but the boss. Humor is essential for live!--Stone 07:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedians, it warms my heart tremendously to know that there is such happy comraderie here :-) --HappyCamper 12:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Personally i would prefer an experimental chemist devoted to Analytical chemistry (my field) instead of a theoretical one, however, to have Bduke involved on Scientific peer review is a wise choice.(you have my vote).HappyApple 02:42, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is progressing slowly and we are experimenting with a much simplified process now at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review. I have taken the liberty of using this Project to try out adding a transcluded page that lists the articles nominated for review. If this seems to work in drawing attention to a review, it will be added to all Science WikiProject pages. One experimental review is a chemistry article and I have reviewed it. We hope to experiment with a few other reviews soon. --Bduke 06:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Standard for compound information tables?

If there one, if so can you point out the specs?

If not should there be one?

Ryan Jones 00:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

If I understand your question correctly, Template:Chembox is what you are looking for. --Ed (Edgar181) 01:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Participants

We have a simple list of just names. It has been brought to my attention that Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics have particpant sub-pages at Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Participants and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants that have names in a table, with space for interests and other comments. Would anyone object if I altered our page to do the same thing, moving the names across of course? --Bduke 06:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That would be fine. We already have a table at WP:Chem, though not on a sub-page. We do have a lot of people now! Thanks, Walkerma 14:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Participants and also created [[Category:WikiProject Chemistry]] similar to what the Physics and maths Projects have. I have put the daughter projects into this category. This category is a sub-category of [[Category:Science WikiProjects]] so all these pages should be taken out of that parent category at some point. I'll get around to do it later. Please go and check your entry and add more information about yourself. The comment column could be used to indicate participation in the daughter projects.--Bduke 00:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Good work!, i have started to adding my areas of interest on the table along my comments, i kindly invite other wikichemists to fill the blanks :) --HappyApple 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

List of alkanes

I'm glad to say that I have completed the list of alkanes all the way from C36H74 to C100H202. Unfortunately I don't really know any other information about them, such as BP or MP. Hope this is helpful, anyway. Kilo-Lima|(talk) 18:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Organic Chemistry Woes

Through my perusal of Wikipedia for the past couple years I have noticed that articles concerning organic chemistry lack good organization. Browsing is generally difficult (especially due to Wikipedia's wonderful search engine) but many pages do lack necessary links to connect, i.e. similar reactions, etc. One particular example of poor cooperative editing: a search for "tautomers" redirects to "Keto-enol tautomerism" and not the "tautomer" article; "tautomerism" redirects to "tautomers." This is partially a rant to raise awareness (unless people are already aware of the [somewhat] shoddy o.chem contribution on Wikipedia). I will try to continue to contribute where I can.Sidar 05:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of this too...I've found that templates really help with improving articles, like the ones on my user page. The status of digital communications on Wikipedia is also just as disorganized. If you create navigational templates, I've noticed that anonymous users tend to contribute more content, as they simply click around each of the topics which need elaboration and add their little tidbit. --HappyCamper 05:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I suspect we won't make a big change until we start a WikiProject for organic chemistry to focus on these very issues. I also agree with HappyCamper's point. Still, we are only a rel. small group of people, and organic chemistry is very large, so it will take a while! Walkerma 17:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I also agree with HappyCamper that navigational infoboxes are the way forward in rationalising our coverage. However it is not a trivial task even to define the topics: anyone who is willing to have a go is welcome. See {{Acids and Bases}} in inorganic chemistry for an example: you amy not agree with the content of the infobox (it is editable!), but it is a valient attempt to keep track on the topic and to make it easier for readers to find their way around. My suggestion would be to start with infoboxes for the major reaction types, linking the classes of compound which undergo these reactions and the name reactions which are of this type. Physchim62 (talk) 11:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
sounds good!--Stone
I predict the infoboxes for major reaction types will become overly burdened with links. Each major reaction type may contain literally a hundred different reactions/compounds. Many reactions are combinations of the major reaction types. May I suggest that if we are to organize o-chem reactions that we do it using a logical category heirarchy. ~K 15:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I must say I like nav boxes, I think they make it a lot easier to find your way around, and the acids/bases one PC mentioned above is a nice example. Whilst K's comment remains valid for very broad topics, I think a more specific, "closed" topic might be amenable to it. If we get "navbox creep" and it gets too big, we can break it up as the problem arises. What about a navbox on isomers - using Image:Isomerism.png as a guide, with other related pages included? I think something like this would help highlight overlap between articles. Also, when I get some time I might be willing to write a navbox for nucleophilic substitutions, since I did a lot of merges/rewrites of all of those articles last year. Walkerma 16:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

UO3 gas - need help

Need somebody recalculating a number!

Depleted uranium and uranium trioxide are the area where a dispute is running wilde.

Uranium oxide was detected to have a vapour pressure of 107- at at 1500K or so (also giving a log p to 1/T plot from 1700 to 1000K). The fellow wikipedian now states that there must be plenty of uranium trioxide arround at room temperature. With the ideal gas law I tried to calculate the numbers of molecules in one cubic meter at standard conditions. This is only a good guess I know. Now I need somebody to take a look and state that this is more or less right or total bullshit at all.

Look at Ackermann equation in the talk:uranium trioxide and state support or other there!

Thanks for your help!--Stone 07:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The fellow wikipedian to whom Stone refers, namely me, has never used the word "plenty" in this context, because it would be a bad idea to have even more uranium trioxide gas in the atmosphere. Our fellow wikipedian Stone has confused sublimation from solid with combustion, because of the ways that the thermodynamic properties were calculated with near-vacuum spectroscopy. Peer-reviewed and scholarly scientific references such as Wilson (1961) and Cotton (1991) support the view that uranyl oxide gas, uranium trioxide, is produced when uranium burns in air. --James S. 22:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Electrolysis of water diagram (Hofmann voltameter)

Most of students not familiar with the topic would find easier to understand the electrolysis of water if they look a diagram of the equipment used. I have uploaded an image of Image:Electrolysis hoffman.PNG, from The Nuffield Foundation website, but user:Carnildo insists this image should be deleted. I want to ask the wikichemists community to left your opinions at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2006 March 25, whether the image should be deleted or not, however i also want to know if there is any free license image of this equipment available.--HappyApple 03:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

List of inorganic compounds, List of organic compounds

These seem too need a big re-write. The lists are currently very unorganised, unstandardised and generaly hard to navigate. Does anyone else see the need for a change in formatting presentation for them and a standardized format, maybe a table of some sort like this:

| Compound Article name | Formula | Other names |

That way it could also be used as a quick lookup resource.

Ryan Jones 11:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I seem to recall that tables are frowned upon in wikipedia, which I agree to: they nearly always become messed up. This lists, in my humble opinion, ARE structured, without the tables, but with typical wikipedia lists, viz.:
  • Compound article name (bold is superfluous — formula

I think adding additional information such as synonyms would probably be acceptable. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 19:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC).

Let me add a couple additional questions into this discussion. The lists contain only a small fraction of the total number of articles that currently exist. Should the lists contain all current articles, or should it focus on the "needed" articles that don't yet exist? If we want to list all the current articles, is there a way of deriving such lists; perhaps from the Category:Organic compounds and Category:Inorganic compounds and all their subcategories? --Ed (Edgar181) 21:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

  • I read the preamble to say that the lists should at least give all chemical compounds in wikipedia. Plus those that need to be added to be complete, whatever complete is. This list is not about listing (and improving) the most important chemicals compounds. There the Chemicals wikiproject for. And if only it were easy to derive such as list. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC).

RE: Chemical Structure Program

This is regarding this.

I think there was a good idea stated there, some sort of LaTex generator based from the SMILES notation. It would have a few benefits, the two most important being:

  1. It would be consistent.
  2. It would allow direct editing of the molecules without need of an external program.

So to the question, what are the chances of something like this being implimented?

Ryan Jones 13:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
The chances are very low. First, the program would have to be written, then it would have to be implemented on the Wiki. Both of these steps take a very long time to complete. Don't hold your breath waiting. ~K 16:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
RyanJ Indded, thanks for the reply ~K I guessed as much :-)
Ryan Jones 16:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Unsepthexium

Unsepthexium is currently a bogus article, nominated for deletion. I strongly agree (why element 176?) and encourage others to vote. A lot of votes for merge are out there. Olin 04:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Has my vote, it is not a real element nor are we close to finding it. Ryan Jones 09:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Some other canidates which are not worth mentioning. One page for all the fictional Transurans should be plenty of space for this. Unbihexium 126, Unbiunium 121, Unbitrium 123, Untriseptium 137 Which is the least questionable, Untrioctium 138, Untriennium 139, Untrihexium 136. --Stone 08:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

New Wiki at ACS Chemical Biology

People here should probably be aware of this initiative. At present much of it looks more like a blog for comments rather than a wiki-style document, but the editors (I met them on Sunday at ACS in Atlanta) are keen on getting people working at the Chem-Bio interface to develop this wiki into a useful resource. I think they want to be able to include wikilinks from published papers to help explain technical terms, and things like that. It's still pretty basic at the moment, but some input from people who know the field (i.e., not me!) would be very helpful. Let's encourage ACS to move into the wiki-era! Walkerma 07:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania 2006 in Boston

For those of you who can visit Boston in early August, you might want to consider a visit to this. If you fancy presenting a paper, poster or similar, take a look here. Walkerma 04:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Uranium

Need urgent help!! The Uranium is constantly flooded with UO3 gas! Cant revert it 3 time but somebody has to!--Stone 13:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The 3RR does not apply if you are reverting vandalism, but looks more like an edit war brewing...hmm...I'm going to leave a note on the talk page and take things from there. --HappyCamper 15:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, maybe not :-) I don't have the time to look at the situation at the moment. --HappyCamper 15:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Some others jumped in! This makes uranium free of gas!--Stone 12:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Yippee!! --HappyCamper 12:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
This case is currently under arbitration: feel free to leave comments on the arbitration pages. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh dear...then I should thank my WikiIntuition which told me there was something quite not right there... --HappyCamper 15:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
See also: #Uranium trioxide gas (continued)

Cluster chemistry

Isn't this an interesting article? Di-tungsten tetra(hpp) --HappyCamper 12:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Needs cleaning-up, but not a bad effort. It reminds me that (last time I checked) we still don't have an article on Al Cotton, which IMHO we should have... Physchim62 (talk) 12:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Diarylethene

I came across the article diarylethene, but it doesn't make sense to me. What is meant by ring-open and ring-closed isomers? Does it mean monomers vs. [2+2] cyclization products (cyclobutane dimers)? Or should it be cis/trans isomers? Is this article about stilbene-like compounds, or something else? --Ed (Edgar181) 17:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

One reasonably common case are the cis-1,2-(3-thienyl)cyclopentenes that cyclize at 365 nm, concomitant with formation of dihydrothiophenes and cyclohexadiene, and then and decyclize at 600 nm. The current diarylethene article is semi-indecipherable hence semi-useless.--Smokefoot 19:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The article makes more sense to me now. But it's good to know that it wasn't just me that found it lacking. I stuck the {{context}} cleanup tag on it. --Ed (Edgar181) 20:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Structure drawing workgroup

We have started a temporary workgroup to look at issues related to structure drawing (2D, 3D, Jmol and metadata). We are particularly trying to define standards for structure drawing in chemistry articles (single structures, equatioms, multistep syntheses and the like). Please sign up if you're interested. Walkerma 05:41, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Dinitrogen

Dinitrogen is really what we need and what is OK? Lets make it a redirect to nitrogen!--Stone 11:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Category:Complex (Chemistry) and other renaming and deletions

This category is up for renaming at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. The suggestion was to Category:Chemical complexes, but then Complexes (chemistry) and Category:Coordination compounds were suggested. None of people discussing it seem to be participants here. --Bduke 01:31, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Also Category:Chemical compounds with unusual names is up for deletion on the grounds that it is redundant with List of chemical compounds with unusual names. Both are rather childish and I fail to see why we need either the category or the list. --Bduke 01:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

While we are on about deletions and renaming, there is also Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 April 15#remaining Professors category pages suggesting a name change of Category:Chemistry professors to Category:Chemists. This proposal seems sensible. I also note that the chemist categories and what is in them is a bit of mess. Maybe we should get together to look at them. --Bduke 01:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Using Jmol to display molecular models

The use of Jmol in Wikipedia may soon be a reality. NicoV has developed an extension for using Jmol within MediaWiki, the engine that runs Wikipedia. Please join the debate on how we use it. --Bduke 22:40, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

That's great news! I mention Jmol in my RR interview (see further down for details), I think it will make Wikipedia chemistry a lot more professional. I'm not an expert on such things, so I can't really help, but I wish you well with the project. Walkerma 15:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Kitasato flask and Shibasaburo Kitasato

Hi over there, this is a question for those deeply involved in Analytical chemistry (like me),

Büchner funnel and a Buchner flask.
Büchner funnel and a Buchner flask.

Why in someplaces the Buchner flask is also known as Kitasato flask[1] [2] [3]?. Is there some sort of conection between Shibasaburo Kitasato and this flask?.--HappyApple 22:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You may well be right, see this. However my Google search only revealed 27 hits for this name, so it doesn't seem to be widely used in the English-speaking world, at least. It may be an anglicisation of the Spanish name, see es:kitasato. Walkerma 03:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
If there is some sort of conection between Shibasaburo Kitasato and Buchner flask, how about to make a redirect to the same page?--HappyApple 20:50, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Interview in Reactive Reports

People here should probably be aware of a recent interview I gave about chemistry on Wikipedia at Reactive Reports (put out by ACD Labs). And yes, I know those dipoles on the bromines are induced dipoles! If you're unhappy with anything I said, or if there is something I omitted to say, please let me know. Walkerma 15:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Good job. Nice article. ~K 15:47, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, nice job, Martin. Good article. I'm starting to be proud to know a famous American. ps. Still can't find the podcasts of the ACS talk. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 19:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC).

Walkerma also got a good mention in Chemistry World, Vol. 3, No. 3, pg 7, (2006). --Bduke 22:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comments. I wanted to be sure I was representing the views of this group correctly. The podcast will probably not be done till the organiser finishes giving exams. As for famous Americans, I am very much aware that it is Wikipedia that is famous, not me! And I am certainly not assimilated as an American yet, I'm the proud bearer of a European Union passport like Wim! Thanks, Walkerma 01:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Changes to Template:Chemistry

Hello. I've made one change to {{Chemistry}} to help 1.0's Work via WikiProjects team assess articles better; since you have extensive worklists, I've added a class parameter to your WikiProject template, which adds pages to categories based on quality, according to the assessment scale for 1.0. In order to use this optional feature, an article's talk page would be changed like this:

{{chemistry}} → {{chemistry|class=A}} Example: Talk:Aluminium chloride

This is being done on a trial basis among just a few WikiProjects, to see if this system can scale; also, to try to make it as easy as possible for editors. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask me at my talk page or at WVWP's talk page. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:38, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Please forgive us, we're playing with a bot at the moment, and it has assigned all talk pages with the Chemistry template as "unassessed Chemistry articles." We will be putting the assessment onto those pages, but it will take time. Hopefully all this will bring a lot of benefits to the project, because it will allow us to automatically update the worklist, list all articles at a certain grade level and track all changes on a daily log. So please be patient! Walkerma 07:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Fictional applications of real materials

It has always bugged me a bit when pop culture trivia shows up in technical articles, sometimes taking it over. For chemistry-related articles, I recommend moving it to Fictional applications of real materials, which seems to be an ideal place for it. User:Femto and I have already being moving some of it there. --Ed (Edgar181) 13:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

For an example of the cleanup possibilities see this edit to fullerene. The nice thing is that nobody should be going to miss the content and want to re-include it, because it's still there and referred to, just in a different place (and more appropriate in my opinion). Femto 15:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to be careful here. I'm a firm believer that we need to make our articles interesting as well as accurate and comprehensive. We have to remember that many of our readers will have very poor understanding of chemistry, and if this helps to "humanise" the subject I'm all for it. I see nothing wrong in having a sentence or two (I'm making something up) "In the popular TV show Star Trek, XXXX was used as a form of chemical weapon by the Klingons against the Romulans." When I get upset is when it appears to become more than a paragraph or so. Just a few minutes ago I deleted an addition to sulfuric acid (not even by an anon user) in the "comic rhyme" section about how you can now buy T-shirts containing the rhyme. Because of its great popularity I can put up with a short section labeled "Comic rhyme" (it's the most frequently edited section of the article!), but this does need to be kept under control. Thanks for taking the initiative on this, but let's not go overboard either! Walkerma 15:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree. We are writing, not technical articles, but encyclopedic articles about technical subjects. If a substance is notable for its recurring appearance in fiction, that has a place in the article. For example, the role of Element 115 in UFO conspiracy mythology is probably at least as notable as its role in heavy-atom physics, for all the four atoms of it that may ever ahve been synthesized. Shimmin 18:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it's very notable and should be mentioned at ununpentium. No, UFO theories are not a technical subject like superheavy nuclei are. The topics intertwine, but they should not intermingle. In an encyclopedia, these subjects belong on different pages. It does not mean that they can't closely refer to each other. Femto 19:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Sufficient separation is achieved by having different sections. They belong on different pages, once the article as a whole becomes long enough to break out into summary style. My two cents. Shimmin 10:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Which is exactly the development that happened at ununpentium. Where should the line be drawn between notable non-fictional fiction and non-notable fictional non-fiction? Femto 11:27, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Ungh. I might want to explain the last sentence. There's the fictional Warcraft Thorium, a metal not at all related to the element, but well-known in a gamer community that is very real. And there's Heinlein's fictional use of thorium which I believe is in real reference to the object of the thorium article. Which one is the more technical subject? Which is more notable, and should be in an article on the element? Femto 12:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, there is no reason at all for Warcraft thorium to be in the thorium article. They share a common name, but they are not the same thing. If Warcraft Thorium is notable enough, it should have it's own article. Otherwise it can be mentioned in the fictional applications article. Heinlein's fictional use doesn't seem notable enough to be mentioned in thorium, but can certainly fit into fictional applications of real materials. --Ed (Edgar181) 12:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I see what you're saying, but Fictional applications of real materials suffers from the same problem: some entries in it are fictional application of real materials, and some are fictional applications of fictional materials that happen to share a name with a real material. Warcraft Thorium, in my opinion, doesn't belong even in that article, because it is not a real material. If Warcraft Thorium is insufficiently notable to warrant Thorium (Warcraft), the guidelines in WP:FICT suggest that the proper place for such warcruft is in some sort of list, like Items in the Warcraft universe, and that Thorium (Warcraft) should then be created as a redirect.
Of course the line between notable and trivial fictional applications of real materials is a judment call, but then, so is the line between notable and trivial nonfictional applications of materials, and even the line between notable and trivial technical information about matierals. On general principles, a real application probably is generally more notable than a fictional one, but I don't like the idea that a fictional application is necessarily inappropriate simply by virtue of being fictional.Shimmin 18:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Fictional applications of real materials explicitly allows different substances that share a common name. It wouldn't make sense to disambiguate between authentic and fabricated fiction anyhow. Warcraft thorium has as little or as much in common with the real material as has Lazar's element 115 with ununpentium. If there should be a Thorium (Warcraft), there also should be a Element 115 (UFO fuel). I still maintain there are two distinct classes of content:
  • The non-fictional which is the subject of the article. This may also include scientific hypotheses and theories, which aren't fictional inasmuch they all aim to eventually converge on the same reality.
  • That which is based (some less fictional, some more loosely) on this reality — but which does not describe it! Thus it has no place in an encyclopedic article beyond a summary that refers to a more appropriate page, which describes the specific use in its own context.
Whether there should be a separate summary depends on notability. Thorium may link to Warcraft materials, ununpentium may link to UFO conspiracies, silver may link to werewolf mythology, tin may link to tin foil hats. The remainder without own lists or articles may then collectively refer to a page such as Fictional applications as a general topic. Femto 12:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Of course, if there's a very notable fictional application, or one that actually helps to understand the context of the article, by all means include a summary of it with a proper In popular culture section. But IF there is such content, there should always be a prominent link to a page like this which may further expand on it. Because as we know from experience, sooner or later it will get expanded to more than a paragraph.
For the most part though, these things aren't particularly suited to improve the reader's understanding of the subject. The chloroform-soaked handkerchief is not the target. It's the alien selenium dandruff shampoo enema. (And yes, I feel this may be mentioned somewhere and should be available through a link from the main article. Just not in it.) Femto 18:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Great! Thanks for that reassurance, and the chloroform one is a good example of what I did not want us to lose. Cheers, Walkerma 19:10, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Just to clarify myself, and reiterate what Femto says, I think the idea is to move things that really are trivia and/or fancruft. I agree that items which truly are notable in popular culture can have a place. I was just happy to find a nice place to put some of it without deleting completely. --Ed (Edgar181) 19:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Articles on Structure

Importantly, not structure itself, but articles generally describing structure. I find myself championing this after organic bond-line notation has shown up in Lewis structure twice, when this notation does not fit the criteria for Lewis structures. In about ten minutes, I've turned up Chicken wire (chemistry), Structural formula, Chemical formula, IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry, SMILES, and I'm certain there are other articles that reference or describe chemical structures.

I'd like to try to compile a listing of what articles there are, and what topics need to be covered, and--importnatly--how the articles should be separated. I can see:

  • An article on chemical structures or structural forumlas in general (partially discussed here);
  • An article on Lewis structures (as found here);
  • An article on bond-line structures (possibly along with compact organic notations and other organic notation);
  • An article describing various computer and digital structures, as currently referenced in SMILES and Chemical database, but without significant description of other systems.

Any thoughts from y'all would be greatly appreciated. --ES2 04:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Hmmm, it's a tricky one. Molecule editor should be somewhere in this long list, and you're right, there are at least a dozen other articles which you haven't mentioned. A global introduction under Chemical structure maybe (currently it's a pretty pathetic stub)? That's an article I so don't want to write, but I guess if we need it... Physchim62 (talk) 13:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
WikiProject-chemistry-collaboration-of-the-month? --Ed (Edgar181) 14:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, if it's for May, I'll volunteer for that! We can set up a navigation box as well for all the related articles, like the new organic template. Walkerma 01:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Sounds awesome to me; sign me up! --ES2 13:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, it's May now... how do I get this started? --ES2 14:55, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad people are getting interested in a chemistry COTM. Unless someone objects, I'll set up the COTM page this week. ~K 15:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Bromide

Can someone who is an admin please move bromide (chemistry) to bromide, which is currently a redirect to bromide (chemistry), and has a history so it requires an admin to move. The "(chemistry)" part is unnecessary if "bromide" itself is not being used as an article title. Bromide (disambiguation) also already exists. Thanks. --Ed (Edgar181) 02:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Cat:Analytical chemistry stubs

This stub type seems sensible enough, but is currently very small. Could the good people of this wikiproject possibly have a look through the parent (or wherever else...) and see if the population can be brought up to a "viable" level? (Ideally something like 60 articles.) And if anyone has any bright ideas about other stub types -- I notice the main cat is currently somewhat oversized. Alai 04:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Category upmerged to Category:Physical chemistry stubs via WP:SFD. Associated template {{analytical-chemistry-stub}} kept. Logged discussion here. --TheParanoidOne 18:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Renaming Category:Cellulose derivates

Hi there. I've proposed renaming Category:Cellulose derivates to Category:Cellulose at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 April 29. I thought I'd see what your project thinks. Please feel free to vote or comment on the proposal. Thanks. Mike Dillon 05:15, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Vinyl vs. acryl?

Are the terms vinyl group and acryl group really synonymous? The latter article (which needs work) seems to suggest as much. "Acryl" is not defined in the Gold Book, and I don't know where else to look. If they are indeed synonymous, the two articles should be merged. I have a feeling however that "acryl group" refers to the group derived from acrylic acid, i.e. the group common to all acrylates. AxelBoldt 23:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

This was a dreadful article, which seemed to be mainly talking about how to name things with acryl in them! I could barely understand most of it, and some parts I could understand were just plain wrong! Nowehere in the article did it actually tell you what an acryl group is! (It's not a vinyl) I've done a quick hatchet job on it, I need to get to bed so if anyone wants to do a more thorough job please do. I think we should keep a separate stub for this., don't merge with vinyl. Thanks for alerting us! Walkerma 02:00, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Links to formulas

When I work on chem articles, I often create redirects using the formulas. For example, if one searches WE with Zrcl4, one gets Zirconium(IV) chloride, ditto for Ticl3, and Titanium(III) chloride. Is it desirable to insert such links, which represent a primitive form of formula search?--Smokefoot 03:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've wondered about this too, I think it's an excellent idea. Is Zrcl4 different from ZrCl4? (I would type in the latter, myself) We should see if Google et al pick these up correctly. For some reason Google doesn't seem to be able to find Inorganic compounds by element from searches like "AlCl3", a shame as one reason I created the page was to help direct formula searches to Wikipedia. Walkerma 04:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
"Redirects are cheap!", so use them by all means. Note that Ticl4 and TiCl4 are different encyclopedia entries, and so need seperate redirects. Physchim62 (talk) 09:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

No category for chemistry books?!

How could this happen? Shall I create one? Take a look at Cat:Science books and Cat:Science-book stubs and see if there's enough to merit a sub-cat. Cheers, Her Pegship 19:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings either way, but there does not look that there is much to put into it as yet. Of course it might encourage us to write some artciles about books. --Bduke 22:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Mass-to-charge ratio

Chemistry Collaboration of the Month is here!

The current Chemistry Collaboration of the Month is Evaporation.
Every month a different chemistry-related topic, stub or non-existent article is picked.
Please improve the article any way you can.

I have constructed the Chemistry Collaboration of the Month page. I have seen interest by at least 5 wikichemists, so that seemed enough to start this collaboration. Now it's up to all of us to make this a success. Please nominate and vote for our first Collaboration of the Month which will be decided on June 1st.

I'm always open to suggestions and help. ~K 18:27, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

During May, let's try to work on Chemical structure as we sort-of-promised above? Walkerma 04:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good, Walkerma, but given the way the COTM boxes seem to work, it looks like what I proposed above isn't so much a COTM as... well, something slightly larger. Could we coordinate that on the Chemical structure talk page for now? ES2 14:52, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I think if we get the Chemical Structure article sorted out nicely, it will help organise the related pages and also get that mini-project started. By all means coordinate things through that talk page. Cheers, Walkerma 16:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

New NFPA 704 fire diamond

I have re-implemented the NFPA 704 hazard symbol using SVG and CSS. Here's an example of how to use it:

{{NFPA 704 | Health=3 | Flammability=2 | Reactivity=1 | Other=<s>W</s> }}

which results in this:

2
3
1
W


To get the radiation hazard symbol, type ☢ (☢). --  Denelson83  05:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

ooooh...thank you! --HappyCamper 15:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Questionable Chemical Reaction Stubs

The following are listed as chemical reaction stubs that leave me head scratching: bath bomb, Lindlar catalyst, overpotential, and Ellingham diagram. I could maybe see Lindar catalyst, but I don't get the rest. Thoughts? Olin 22:43, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting reclassifying them? You're right, most are in the wrong place IMHO. I'd suggest leaving bath bomb where it is (though it is a quirky entry!), then reclassify Lindlar as organic chem stub (somehow inorganic compound stub doesn't seem right when it's a metal), overpotential as analytical chem stub, and the Ellingham diagram as both P-Chem and metallurgy stub. Does this sound reasonable? Walkerma 02:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. ~K 02:53, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure I'll go do that now. Olin 11:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Dibenzene chromium

Are the benzene rings in dibenzene chromium staggered or eclipsed? --HappyCamper 20:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I expect that it is similar as for ferrocene, they just rotate, there may be some preference for the staggered conformation, but the energy differences are probably very small. I am not sure about solid-state structure, but that does not always define a preference, that may also be due to packing. --Dirk Beetstra 20:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Anonymous edits

Can someone please double check this anonymous user's edits. Most seem like reasonable edits to me, but a couple of them are edits that change to opposites (white to black; highest to lowest), which seems suspicious to me. Maybe I've just seen too much vandalism lately to completely assume good faith. --Ed (Edgar181) 17:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The IP is registered to Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza". Probably a shared computer in a chemistry classroom, at least this would explain any Jekyll-and-Hyde type edits. What color is titanium carbide? I've found data sheets ranging from light gray to black in a quick web search. (no idea about lutetium's spin quantum numbers, seems odd though) Femto 19:22, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

According to my CRC, Lu-176 has a spin of -7, so I think you were right to revert that edit, Ed. The same source helpfully lists TiC as "gray." Walkerma 19:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Looks like it was just that one "bad" edit then. --Ed (Edgar181) 20:11, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Alkanes

Currenty, the article Alkane has a peer review request on it. It is also on for GA nomination. The article is pretty good, but needs some work. I think you guys could help. 151.200.152.4 20:26, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Superoxide review

An anonymous user has stated that Superoxide is incorrect; maybe someone should look into it. AxelBoldt 23:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

take a look now and let me know if I can help further. Its a nifty anion.--Smokefoot 04:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Adolph Frank

Hi,

I just translated the article about Adolph Frank from German into English. There were however quite a few chemical terms, about which there are only articles in the German wikipedia, but not the English-language. Could someone please look over the article and correct any mistakes I may have made..

Thanx,

--CarabinieriTTaallkk 13:14, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Took a shot at it. Hope it helps --Rifleman 82 23:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Another chemistry Featured Article?

I'm thinking it's about time we worked on another Featured article candidate. At the Chemicals WikiProject we produced three last year (HCl, HOAc, Ni), but this project hasn't generated any in a long time. Shouldn't we produce more Featured Articles that are not chemical substance pages? If so, what should we pick? I would like to see us really improve one of our fairly basic topics, something that would have fairly broad appeal so it could appear on the front page. For ideas I suggest taking a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Worklist. One possibility would be to improve Computational Chemistry from GA to FA, other candidates might be crystallography, chemical bond, chromatography or maybe some other words beginning with C. If we chose to work on a chemist instead, we should talk with the History of Chemistry people. Thoughts, please? Walkerma 20:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Of course I agree. If you'd like to prefer not to do a chemical compound such as Lead(II) nitrate, and want something of the WP Chemistry worklist, it would be obvious to work on a A-Class article. And that leads automatically to the chemists, as that is the only section with such topnotch articles yet. Antoine Lavoisier would be nice? It doesn't start with a C, but we could work on that ;-). Wim van Dorst (Talk) 22:09, 15 June 2006 (UTC).
  • How about giving a try to Electrochemistry article ? :) --HappyApple 05:18, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Chemical bond will probably be my summer project (I am on holiday in ten days time), otherwise I think C*** otherwise known as Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (I assume this is what you had in mind, Wim) would be a good candidate: just don't lose your heads over it! Physchim62 (talk) 06:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, why don't we start work on Monsieur Lavoisier? Interesting piece of trivia - the article we have today is quite similar to the original article written in 2001 by none other than Larry Sanger. I'll be at Brandeis soon, I'll plunder the Brandeis library for books. If people want, I'd like to contact the History of Chemistry wikiproject directly, they may well be interested in helping out. PC, can you look into French language sources? (Chemical bond is a great choice for general improvement to work on, by the way). Maybe Electrochemistry in the fall? Shall we get started on Lavoisier now? Walkerma 20:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I am for to start working in Monsieur Lavoisier article, he was undoubtly a champ in many subfields of chemistry.HappyApple 23:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Reference format

I hesitate to ask because I fear the answer: What is WE-chem's stance on reference format? The one that I prefer facilitates dropping in ref's via the [1] method. We're using this format in the collaboration-of-the-month, fluorocarbon. Simplified mechanisms for adding supporting referrences would facilitate improving the quality of WE chem articles. I am seeing, however, the use of this awfully tedious method where authors, volume, etc. must be parsed in some sort of hypertext gobbledygook, thereby discouraging more casual contributors from inclusion of new references. Which format is in our near-term future? Journal-book references are what often distinguishes a plausible article from one consisting of claims-assertions. Now, a rant: put the titles into journal references please! References lack titles in the print-journal world for the sake of space. WE is not so constrained. References lacking titles are far less useful to users of WE. But I defer to the advice of the admin folks, who do so much to keep this enterprise going.

  1. ^ all authors (avoid 'et al'), "Title in full" journal name in full (why abbreviate?) with volume, inclusive pages, year

(Above posted by Smokefoot) Traditionally we used the Note/Ref format found at Indole, but that seems to be falling out of favour now. I personally prefer the <ref></ref> format you like, and I would say stick with that. I apologise for not using article titles, I'm so used to the chem literature, but you make a fair point about space and I will follow your suggestion from now on . Now a proposal of mine - modern electronic journal databases such as Science Direct (Elsevier journals) and ACS use DOIs to uniquely identify each article, and you can search by DOI. I would propose that we recommend use of the DOI for all articles, just like we recommend ISBN for books. When we agree on all this we can update the style guide. Walkerma 01:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The format we seem to like is described here. Walkerma 04:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


{{Chemistry}} template

I'm not actually sure if this is a problem with the template or if it's supposed to be like this. Has anyone noticed that it has a red link to this wiki project? The template links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_Chemistry instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry . See, I'll even put the template here to show you.


WikiProject on Chemistry
Portal:Chemistry
 Chemistry Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chemistry, which collaborates on Chemistry and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project.
NA This non-article page does not require a rating on the quality scale.

If it's supposed to be like this then I do apologise and you can just shoot me down now. But if it is a mistake can someone fix it so that articles do link to the project. --Tobes 14:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Tobes! I checked this out, and (as of now) the problem you show is not with the main like "supported by the WikiProject on Chemistry" link - that link is fine. The problem you mention seems only to be with the link "Please participate by editing the article XXXX". This link will only work when you are on an article talk page rather than a project talk page such as this one (i.e. you are in the main article namespace). I think the problem will therefore only be seen here and at Talk:WP:Chem, and the word "article" should imply why it is redlinked. On the 500 or so article talk pages it works fine, see Talk:Antoine_Lavoisier for an example. Is this acceptable?
Meanwhile, I wanted to mention another problem, hopefully now fixed. Some of the category links in the template lost their capitalisation, and this broke the links, causing the bot to conclude that we now have zero articles tagged! We should see those articles mysteriously reappear tonight. Walkerma 17:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Martin's explanation about the redlink is correct. As far as I know it has always been like this. And the capitalization drop is mine (Sorry sorry sorry): I enhanced the extra programming (such as the NA qualification; see above) in the template, which included the category names. They have immediately be corrected by Martin 'zealot' Walker. Thanks, Martin. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC).
Thanks for the explanation. I thought the link was always supposed to point to the project, but now I get that it points to the article of the talk page its on. --Tobes 06:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Sub-Project: Physical Chemistry needed ?

The work that Project Chemistry has done on the various elements and substances is impressive. Big props to you guys.

But it seems to me that the area of Physical Chemistry could do with much more active management -- there are a lot of basic things that would appear on any Phys Chem course, where at present the wikipedia article is sketchy at best, or in some case non-existant.

As a step towards that more active management, can I suggest that Project Chemistry at least compiles a long-list for tracking concepts in Physical Chemistry that ought to be explained; and then from it a priority list of the most imprtant articles needed to properly give a rounded out overview.

At the moment, there doesn't seem to be any priority list or status list for Physical Chemistry; and I think that lack is making itself visible in the overall encyclopedia. Jheald 18:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC).

Excellent idea! I agree that P-Chem is a weak area for us, because fewer of us have that background. We have a set of "proposed" goals (see the project page) which we have worked on but never officially adopted. They do include a list of physical chemistry topics along with assessments (a bit out of date), perhaps these could serve as a starting point? Walkerma 21:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Tentatively I support the idea of a sub-project for Physical Chemistry. Would this include Quantum chemistry, Theoretical chemistry and Computational chemistry? I think there are two general issues that might best be resolved first. These are well examplified on the Entropy page at present, as Jheald knows. The first is the relationship with Physics. Articles such as "Entropy" have a tension because physics and chemistry look at the topic in different ways and teach it differently. In some areas this tension is avoided by different yet very similar articles from the chemistry and physics approaches. This is particularly the case in the overlap of molecular physics, chemical physics with computational chemistry, theoretical chemistry, etc. I do not think the tension should be avoided in this way, but faced. So the question is, "How do we do this?". Do we, for example, want a Project that is a sub-project of both the chemistry and physics projects? The second issue is about the level of articles. Taking entropy as the example, it is quite clear there is room for high level articles such as Fluctuation theorem that are complex and will have a readership from only highly qualified scientists. However, the entropy article itself will be approached by the general reader and the first year chemistry or physics student and all three groups might expect to find different things in the article. I do not know the answer here, but it is pressing on the Entropy article at present with Frank Lambert pushing for an approach that is best supported by how the subject is taught to chemists. I think it arises very much in a lot of chemistry articles, and perhaps most particularly in physical chemistry. Can we explore these areas a bit before we decide on a sub-project. --Bduke 02:24, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is a pressing need for a seperate project, although I would support one if it were set up. We certainly need to improve our coverage: my tentative goal would be to cover the first couple of years of an undergrad syllabus fairly comprehensively. Perhaps a set of articles series would help organize thoughts—Chemical thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, chemical bonding, etc But I think here is the best place to discuss things, as it is fairly widely watched and so will get the best range of inputs. What do organic chemists want us to put in about acidity, for example? --Physchim62 (talk) 14:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
You know, when I first arrived on Wikipedia, the first thought I had was that there weren't enough articles on Physical Chemistry. However, I don't think we have a "critical mass" of editors to really develop those topics in a manner where a new WikiProject would be needed. However, at the same time, I don't think it would hurt to set one up. After all, I made a few WikiProjects myself...though it took about a year before anything substantial happened...That is to say, I don't think having an extra WikiProject would be harmful. --HappyCamper 04:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I have added this proposal to Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects linking back to this discussion for further debate. While support seems to be lukewarm, it seems it might be worthwhile to go ahead in a small way and slowly. I am prepared to set up the pages in a few days if we get a few more supporters and no strong disagreement. --Bduke 05:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I would just jump ahead and create Wikipedia:WikiProject Physical Chemistry. I would do this myself, but I must be frank and say I am enjoying vacation season too much at the moment to take initiative on this. I did a similar thing for Wikipedia:WikiProject Polymers a while ago. It took perhaps 6 months before anything interesting happened, but again - time and time again, the Magic of the Wiki comes along... --HappyCamper 06:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The blue link in the above para says it all. I have set up the Project page. Please modify it as ypu like. --Bduke 05:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

HELP! HELP! On the WP ENTROPY article!!

[4] FrankLambert 03:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The post was somewhat long, so I relegated it to a permanent link instead. --HappyCamper 17:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
A case of energy being degraded into heat? Physchim62 (talk) 18:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedian style :-) --HappyCamper 18:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Organization of articles about chelates

I noticed that a large portion of the article Gadolinium(III) chloride wasn't about Gd(III) chloride at all, but about Gd(III) chelates used as MRI contrast agents. I suggested an article Gadolinium(III) chelate, but Smokefoot and Dirk Beetstra had other ideas. —Keenan Pepper 22:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well the catalyst for this discussion was Keenan, who helpfully noticed that the Gd(III) discussion under Gadolinium(III) chloride was probably misplaced - readers seeking info underpinning MRI and relaxation agents might not find what they are after. I worry about the tentative or implicit proposal that each article on each metal might get a separate article on its chelates. This new set of articles might lead to unhelpful splintering of information. As Dirk Beetstra mentioned, each such article would need to start with the EDTA complex, to which I would add the porphyrinate, the acetylacetonate, bipyridine, Tp, dppe,.... Endless. But maybe Gd(III) is sufficiently different that my concerns are unfounded.--Smokefoot 23:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
The goal is not to have an article about every possible chemical (that would be impossible), only the notable ones. It's perfectly fine to have an article about Gd(DTPA) but not about Tb(DTPA), because the former is commercially available and has no doubt saved lives, but almost nobody cares about the latter. I'm not proposing a "new set of articles", just one new article about a notable group of substances. —Keenan Pepper 23:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm...I would find it awkward to have an article called Gadolinium(III) chelate. I suppose it would be warranted in situations where a full blown article can be written about it. Otherwise, I think it would be best to keep information at the root articles. --HappyCamper 04:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
We ought to have an article about MRI contrast agents, although I don't like the title gadolinium(III) chelate and more than others here: I would suggest Chelate complexes of gadolinium or coordination chemistry of gadolinium as title which ring better (for me at least). We are going to have similar problems with other elements (technetium springs to mind) so it is probably worthwhile for as many users as possible to give their opinions. Physchim62 (talk) 18:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
How about we create a category for these compounds first? Say "MRI contrast agents" - and we would simply add the categorization to article to whichever compound is used. This way, we don't have to be forced to write extensive stubs at the beginning... --HappyCamper 18:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The category sounds good, but I don't understand why anyone would be "forced to write extensive stubs". Isn't "extensive stub" an oxymoron?? —Keenan Pepper 18:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Creating empty categories is generally considered bad form... Physchim62 (talk) 18:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Category first, article first, what difference does it make? I'm more concerned about the final result. I want to write an article about gadolinium chelates, and I think Gadolinium chelate (or Chelates of gadolinium or whatever, that's trivial) is the logical title for it. Other people are saying things like "Oh no, now we'll be forced to write articles on all these other chelates...", which doesn't make sense to me. Some are notable enough to deserve articles, some are not. When has that ever been a problem? —Keenan Pepper 18:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
One of the things that springs to my mind about writing an article about Gadolinium(III) chelates (however it is going to be named, by the way, coordination chemistry of gadolinium is a different subject, and it might be an interesting encyclopedic article) is that some of these chelates are going to have an article of themselves. I am thinking here about the Gd complexes (chelates) that have a use in MRI (i.e. are as such injected into living creatures) would get their own page (that page would be either made by a pharmacist, or by a chemist), the same goes for NMR shift reagents. These compounds would end up in the category 'gadolinium compounds', and indeed, it would not be a bad idea to put them into a new category 'MRI contrast agents' (or whatever the correct name is; is this actually a 'contrast' agent, that is indeed the term for those poly-iodo-compounds they inject into bloodstreams to make them visible on X-ray, they really serve for contrast?) and others into a category 'NMR shift reagents'. Much of the information on Gd chelates that then might end up in that article, either doubles with the individual compounds, or, if the doubling is avoided (just point to the appropriate categories), would only contain the less interesting Gd chelates. So I would suggest, write MRI contrast agent, start some pages with typical contrast agents (put them in a category MRI contrast agents), and leave it at that (or maybe, for the true gadolinium freak .. coordination chemistry of gadolinium). --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
To reply to Keenan Pepper, empty categories can be speedy-deleted under C1, which is a fair judge of the fact that they are not really welcome on WP! One should create the articles first, then the category. I would suggest that any gadolinium compound which has been approved for human use should have its own article: such a compound would have either an International Nonproprietary Name (INN) or a trade name, which could (and should) be used for the article title. Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs can probably help out here, at least to identify the compounds involved and offer guidance on article style. This is the solution that we use for cisplatin, for example. Research compounds are probably not notable, but could be included in a general article if there is space. Physchim62 (talk) 11:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, we could have an article about Gd(DTPA), an article about Gd(DTPA-BMA), an article about Gd(BOPTA), an article about Gd(DTPA-BMEA), and so on, but that would be stupid, because they would be terribly redundant. They're all used for exactly the same purpose, and the differences might interest a doctor or an MRI specialist, but definitely not an average encyclopedia reader. —Keenan Pepper 21:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm .. you've got a point there. But then, who is interested in technetium chloride (I am not going to be the judge of what is interesting and what not, so I don't see while good articles would be redundant). But while we are arguing, no-one is keeping you from actually creating/writing an article on gadolinium chelates (still, I think that writing an article on MRI contrast agents with as a subsection gadolinium chelates would be better, if I would be injected with an MRI contrast agent, I would look for that in the wikipedia, not for gadolinium chelates), if parts of it grow big enough to warrant an own article, they will split off in the end, anyway (normal Wikipedia evolution, see e.g. butanol, and more important, if a specific MRI contrast agent accidentily also has another use, the seperate article is less redundant than describing a (maybe even stupid) compound twice as a sub-part of two major articles (what's that about being redundant)). But whatever you do, it might be a good way of getting these things started. You've got my thumbs up! --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, you've appealed to my mergist philosophy. MRI contrast agent it is! I'm still doing research now though... this stuff is complicated. —Keenan Pepper 23:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

List of publications in chemistry

There are a couple of new entries here that have been up for debate for a week with no debate. One is questionable because the book is in German and perhaps should not be on the English WP. The other was added by a anon. It seems a good entry, but I'll delete it because it has no sections for "description" and "Importance". A note on the anon's talk page has produced no response. That one is on Polymer Chemistry and we need someone to add these sections. The first is on Thermochemistry. The debates close on July 20 and July 21 Please comment on the talk page. --Bduke 08:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Request for peer review

As promised, I have been working on Chemical bond, and the draft result is Chemical bond/Temp. All comments are welcome, improvements to the article even more so ;) Physchim62 (talk) 11:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

From the peer reviewer script

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and may or may not be accurate for the article in question.

  • There may be an applicable infobox for this article.For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.[2] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
  • Per WP:MOSNUM, when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km², and pounds -> lb.
  • Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
  • There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,
    • correctly
    • is considered
    • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).[3]
  • Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
    • While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 21 additive terms, a bit too much.
    • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
  • This article needs footnotes, preferably in the cite.php format recommended by WP:WIAFA. Simply, enclose inline citations, with WP:CITE or WP:CITE/ES information, with <ref>THE FOOTNOTE</ref>. At the bottom of the article, in a section named “References” or “Footnotes”, add <div class="references-small"><references/></div>.[4]
  • The article will need references. See WP:CITE and WP:V for more information.
  • Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a. [5]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

While reading it, and doing a bit of copy-editing
  • This is a good topic, and a good step forward from what was.
  • The article is rather long. I would recommend a reduction by a third or so, and that is IMHO possible by some good copy-editing: there is enough loose text in most paragraphs that can be edited out.
  • It is very low on refs. Strong recommendation here for FAs.

Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC).

I don't have any suitable textbooks to hand, so the article was written from memory (apart from numerical values, of course :), which came from the cited source). Anyone with access to a university level physical chemistry textbook is welcome to check and add the reference! As for the length, everyone here knows that I can go on a bit, so feel free to copyedit for clarity (it is not far off the 32k normal maximum, so I think the estimate of one-third is excesive unless new material is to be added). Figures are also needed. Physchim62 (talk) 14:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Very busy at the moment, but a quick read suggests this is a nice improvement on a key article. I very much like the topics covered and the layout. I agree very much with Wim's analysis - copyediting and refs are sorely needed. Surely you will be keeping the refs from the old version? Inline refs are the way to go, I suspect they'll be mandatory for FAs before long. Some pictures of Na+ distorting the shape of Cl- and such things might help too, can Ben help with that? Thanks, Walkerma 05:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Spectroscopy

I just started a new WikiProject for Spectroscopy. I am hoping that efforts can be focused from this project and Physics. I am new to editing and may have taken too big of a bite. --Tjr9898 00:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It would have been much better if you had opened this up as a suggestion here before creating it. Further up this page is a discussion about a WikiProject on Physical Chemistry. I hope to start that this weekend as there seems to be some support. I have no problem with your project. There will however be some overlap with your new project. Some people might have problems for that reason. Should we merge them together? --Bduke 01:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Hind sight is twenty-twenty in respect to starting the WikiProject Spectroscopy as a discussion. However, I still think it needs to be done. Physical chemistry does definitely use spectroscopy for information about the intermolecular interactions. At the same time, analytical chemistry uses it for substance composition information. So, I guess I will continue to develop the WikiProject Spectroscopy unless there is more support to merge with something else. --Tjr9898 03:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Chemistry is an experimental science. Lets go with both of them and see how they develop: they can always be merged (or even die a natural death) at a later date if this seems useful! Physchim62 (talk) 14:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
w00t! I will add stuff there for sure. --HappyCamper 13:58, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Confusing merge

Azobisisobutylonitrile and ABCN have been proposed to be merged. I was about to do so, until I read a comment on the talkpage that they weren't the same thing. Is this true, or can the two articles be merged? I'm asking here because they seem to be chemical compounds, and, well, this is wikiproject chemistry. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 01:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

They are not identical compounds. But they are very similar, and they are both used for essentially the same purpose. It makes sense to me to merge the two. --Ed (Edgar181) 01:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
They are different compounds with different names and different acronyms. They should not be merged unless a new title is used. I think different compounds should have different articles in general. --Bduke 01:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm removing the merge tags. Still, it would be best to have an expert add a little to both articles, and an infobox to Azobisisobutylonitrile. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 01:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to improve the ABCN article, added a structure, filled up the infobox. Added a "See alo" to AIBN. --Rifleman 82 07:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

"Chemistry" banner template broken for project pages

The article link in the {{Chemistry}} is not correct for pages that aren't in the main namespace. See for example Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions (chemistry), where the "editing the article" points to a page in the main namepace—the redlinked Naming conventions (chemistry)—even though the page is in the Wikipedia section—so the link should be to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry) instead. DMacks 02:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Hooray magic words! —Keenan Pepper 03:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Cool thanks. And /me learns some new WP syntax too! DMacks 03:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Carbon dioxide

Someone suggested a peer review! Might need some chemists!-Stone 11:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Point groups

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to add point groups stuff to the information panels? --HappyCamper 04:55, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Object. Most compounds are C1. If a compound belongs to an unusual point group this should be noted in the article text. Physchim62 (talk) 15:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree there should be consistency to where the point group is indicated in some manner for quick access. This is only an issue for simple molecules of course and most of those are pretty easy to figure out if you are to know group theory at all and are not likely to be looked up. But still consistency would be good and this would acheive that however it would be a waste of space for most molecules.--Nick Y. 17:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Evaporation

For anyone interested, the page Evaporation could use some attention. See Talk:Evaporation#Definitions of "evaporation" and "vaporization" and Talk:Evaporation#Why Doesn't Oil Evaporate? / Influence of Surface Tension on Evaporation for a couple of potential problems that I noticed about the page.--GregRM 22:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


Template:Vegetable oils

Please check Template talk:Vegetable oils and write your opinion about including essential oils in Template:Vegetable oils. Thanks, Cacycle 03:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Organizing 'Organic reactions' subcategories

Hello Chemists, I'm trying to build a concensus regarding the subcategories of Category:Organic reactions. Please come on over and give your two bits at Category talk:Organic reactions. ~K 04:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

confusion about CHAPS detergent article

The article CHAPS detergent is not very accessible to a non-chemist audience, and has been proposed for deletion. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CHAPS detergent. TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 02:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

IUPAC recommends "Sulphuric acid" or "Sulfuric acid"?

(copied from Talk:Sulfuric acid)

Which does IUPAC recommend? --HappyCamper 16:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think sulfur in stead of sulphur, so sulfuric acid, and so for all compounds which have the word sulfur/sulphur in the name?
By the way, is it an idea to put all those spelling things into one document (e.g. IUPAC recommended spelling of substance names) or something similar, and making a link there on top of the page (like a {{for}} or {{see also}}, e.g. {{alternative substance naming}} with parameters sulphur and sulfur on the sulfur page, redirecting to a subheader on the naming page). It would make life easier on which policy the chemistry part of Wikipedia has adopted for pagenaming (if a dispute, make a link in the first line to that document). And in that way we can eradicate all spelling-sections. With a bit of careful thinking it could even be used for pages where systematic naming vs. trivial name is a problem. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Let's bring this up on Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. I think expanding this idea might be useful. --HappyCamper 17:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The recommended spelling is indeed sulfuric, as there is no evidence for an etymological reason to prefer sulphur and related names. The reasonings behind spellings should really be in the element articles, but I suppose there could be a section in IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry. I am not aware of any problems in English beyond the names of the three elements sulfur, aluminium and caesium. Physchim62 (talk) 15:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The other main problem arises in organic chemistry, between things like 1-propanol (taught as IUPAC in US textbooks) and propan-1-ol (isn't that "real" IUPAC?). Walkerma 00:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'd forgotten about IUPAC preferred names in organic chemistry (acetic acid rather than ethanoic acid, etc). 1-Propanol is not correct IUPAC, as it would refer to an alcohol derived from 1-propane: these points really need to be discussed in sections in the articles concerned, as they already are in several articles (see Carbon tetrachloride). Physchim62 (talk) 14:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Could we also make an article that collects all these tidbits together too? :-) --HappyCamper 15:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Images depicting impossible protonation states

Currently, all our images of amino acid structures show protonated carboxylic acid groups and unprotonated amine groups. An anonymous contributor remarked at Talk:Arginine that this protonation state is not dominant at any pH. Should we change all the images to zwitterions, or keep them as "impossible" amino acids for the sake of clarity? —Keenan Pepper 22:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I would keep them as is. --HappyCamper 02:03, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Why assume that the chembox picture depicts a molecule in aqueous solution? Shimmin 02:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with HappyCamper and we should keep them as is. ~K 03:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I would leave them too. The structures are not "impossible" anyway, just not heavily populated. --Smokefoot 03:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Call for Collaboration topics

Calling all WikiChemists! The Chemistry Collaboration of the Month is in need of your help. We need chemists to collaborate on the current COTM, nominate new collaborations, and join in other nominations. Let's not let this collaboration die in it's infancy. ~K 22:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Biochemistry stub split

I notice you don't link to Cat:biochemistry stubs, but as there seems to be no separate wikiproject, I'm guessing you are the guys... I've proposed a number of splits of this stub type, comments and suggestions welcome. Alai 02:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

And also, the Cat:chemistry stubs are themselves oversized. I've further proposed a possible Cat:chemical engineering stubs, and it looks to me as if more use of Cat:physical chemistry stubs and Cat:organic chemistry stubs would be helpful. Alai 17:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've not been able to clear out Cat:Chemistry stubs for many months, so I would guess it is wildly overpopulated: any help gratefully received! Physchim62 (talk) 18:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
If you've any insight as to what would be useful additional sub-types, please share. Analysing the categorisation of the existing stubs, I could only come up with the above three... and was rather surprised to find that they already exist! (I could provide a list of the candidates for each from an offline dump, or else you could use stubsense for the same purpose.) Alai 19:32, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi both, I am running AWB runs regularly on groups of compounds, now having some 2700 chemical substances (that is, things that have, or that I expect to have a CAS-number) on my list. I sometimes add or remove stubs-templates from them. I have seen that there is still a lot of work to be done on many compounds (the number is staggering .. I would not be surprised that there are more than 1000 which are below standard). Of course new stubs are added regularly, so it will be very hard to get rid of them. But if I can be of any help with any categorisation of compounds (organic, inorganic, organometallic, polymer, whatever) .. please let me know, I will at least keep an eye on them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
In particular, surely compounds shouldn't be being tagged with {{chem-stub}} at all, but rather with {{inorganic-compound-stub}} or {{organic-compound-stub}}, as appropriate? Alai 21:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
True, but it is a subcategory of the chem-stub. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
FYI, I've made lists of the candidates to me moved to organic compounds, inorganic compounds and chemical engineering. If someone with more of a chemical clue than I could cast an eye (or an AWB) over these with an eye to restubbing them, and weeding out the inevitable false positives from the whackiness of the category system, that would be very handy. Alai 02:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry. I see many non-compounds in the org and inorg list (persons, for examples). I can go through them this evening, but any suggestion where to leave the ones I discard? --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks. If you either change the stub tag to something else (if it's incorrect as it stands), or simply delete the false-positives from the list, that would ensure that they won't be retagged when (and if) I run the bot over them. If the error rate is especially high, let me know, and I'll try and do it over, excluding the categories that seem to be causing the problem. Alai 03:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I have gone through organic compounds, inorganic compounds and chemical engineering, first run. I added a raw classification behind most terms now. Some things I don't know, still have a ??, I might change them in due course, but that will go slower (this run was all by gut-feeling). I am not really in the field of chem.eng, might have missed some there. But should be able to guess whether or not things fall in that field. But the way they are now sorted is quite 'wrong'. Leave me a message on my talkpage when you are going to change the lists in some way, then I will stop for a moment to add classifications to them (I will do a couple every now and then when I have time, or when I have nothing else to do). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, it looks like the chem-eng candidates are mostly more correctly sorted to existing types, so it's probably not a viable split for the time being. If people keep on "diffusing" the contents down to the existing stub types, it'll become clearer in due course how those will best be split (even if it makes some of those (more) oversized in the meantime). I notice that in some cases the stub tags have been removed, and in other cases, there's not a "real" stub tag, but instead use of the {{maintenance}} template. In these cases, the bot won't be able to retag with other stub types (and the in the latter, it'd take some head-scratching to do so by hand). Alai 02:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Alai. Indeed there are many pages that have {{maintenance}} marks. I have programmed my AWB to remove the maintenance template, and replace it with {{whatever-stub}} (where appropriate, the template is not even implemented good; for what I do with it, see here). I have now re-stub-sorted the user:alai/org list, just started with the user:alai/inorg list. I will also do the user:alai/chemeng list, later. By the way, I have removed many, many stubs from the org-list, many articles where not even close to being a stub. I am quite rigorous in that, if the article tells more than 'grass is green stuff' (tells a bit about where it grows (everywhere!), and what you can do with it (eh ... oh .. cows eat it), then I remove the stub, but that's just me, if people disagree, they can add a stub-mark again). I expect the same for inorg and chemeng. For now I would not use the lists anymore, they will be obsolete soon (I will post a message here when I am finished with the process). --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Alai, I have finished with the three lists. There may be some left, but most have gone (were not stubs, anyway), and of the rest a lot have been subclassified. Good luck with 'stub-sort'-ing! --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks Dirk, great work: the chem-stubs are now a mere 4 1/2 listings pages. I'll regenerate the lists for all of the above types come then next db dump, and hopefully things will be clearer still. De-stubbing I'm quite happy to leave to the judgement of domain experts, just double-checking there was no confusion about what the bot would be doing. (I won't in fact run the bot on these until after the next dumps and running the new lists past the wikiprojects.) Alai 21:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
You're welcome, had to be done, anyway (and was quite necessary), and it gave me a chance to test my latest scripts (some pages neatly cleaned up). See you around! --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:40, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration: Kehrli

An Arbitration case regarding the behaviour of User:Kehrli on mass spectrometry related articles has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Kehrli. This arbitration was initiated by User:Nick Y.. Your input would be very welcome, especially because the arbitration committee members are not chemist. Please add your comments to the following page: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Kehrli. Cacycle 01:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

A question on nomenclature...

If you have a straight chain hydrocarbon of some sort, capped with an aldehyde on both ends, how do you name the compound? --HappyCamper 18:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Difficult. You mean as in a α-ω-dialdehyde? .. or as in '1,6-hexadial'? (But I am not sure about these)

--Dirk Beetstra T C 18:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Hexandial (created with autonom2000) is fully sufficant for the name because the aldehyde group can only be at the end of the chain.--Stone 18:17, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

α-ω-dialdehydes sound right. Well, this question came across my mind when I found in a reference "2-buteneal". Would O=C-C=C-C=O (omitting the H's) really be 2-butenedial? --HappyCamper 18:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
α-ω is really old fashioned! 2-butene is ok. 2 means bond between carbon 2 and three or the second in the carbon chain.--Stone 06:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Not too old fashioned, it is still commonly used when you cannot specify the number of carbons between the two groups. E.g. if you would be talking about 7, 8, 9 or 10 carbons between the two aldehydes. And we are also using the term α-amino acid, I think. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
In a text its OK but to give the right name to something its better to use the numbers. Biochemistry wit +/- and D/L and the ω fatty acids has a strong tendency to use old names without knowing the new systematic nomenclatur. The α-amino acid is one and &gama;-aminobuturic acid (4-aminobutanoic acid) is another one.--Stone 08:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
It is indeed always better to systematically name, and you are right, the α-, β-, γ- and ω-naming is quite old, but there are still examples, and for some situations quite useful. I guess I would dare to write 'the reaction was tried with the unbranched saturated C6-C12 α,ω-dichlorides, but the reaction failed in all cases', and not writing out the full names of the 7 compounds (I guess I would actually resort to making a figure with the compounds, and writing 'Cl(CH2)nCl (n = 6-12), 4a-g'). But it is quite hypothetical. Is there anything in the Wikipedia about these trivialities? And where to put it? I know that there was in Dutch commercials some time ago something good to put on your skin, because it contained 'β-hydroxy'. I could imagine that people would be trying to find that in an encyclopedia... --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The use is perfectly OK! A redirect or mentioning the common name in the first line of the article is also good. I would also not try to delet name GABA although there are better ones!--Stone 10:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The names quoted above should be hexanedial and but-2-enedial: there is no elision before a d in the ending. Physchim62 (talk) 17:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks :-) --HappyCamper 05:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Zinc oxide

There are many obviously wrong facts in this article, somebody more experienced in inorganic chemistry should check it (Martin?). Cacycle 16:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately I'm pretty busy getting Version 0.5 produced right now, and getting ready for a new semester. I put ZnO on my to-do list a year ago, you can see how far I got..! I'd like to get back to more chem editing, so longer term I may work on it. Any other takers? Walkerma 05:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

A notice

Hi everyone. Wikiversity is up. Very young project. Could use a hand over there :-) --HappyCamper 15:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Good work, HC. I plan to join in but not until I get back from a 6 week trip to London starting tomorrow. --Bduke 00:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
    Bduke, I wonder if you have seen b:Computational_chemistry? --HappyCamper 15:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
No, I had not. More to look at when I get back. It looks reasonable but as the author states it needs expansion. Off to London is a few hours. --Bduke 23:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Indeed, HappyCamper, a laudable extra activity. If only I had fifty hours per day, apart from my normal job. And have a nice trip, Bduke. Be sure to visit Baden-Powell House too! Wim van Dorst (Talk) 15:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC).
  • Hi HappyCamper, I have been giving some thought but the thing is that I already have an issue with wikibooks. it seems to me that it is a repeat of wikipedia but without internal linking (very important) and without referencing. As it stands the Wikibooks on chemistry is also very incomplete. And now we also have Wikiversity? Why do the same job three times? As an alternative it can be considered to compile a list with chemistry articles in wikipedia put in the correct order as a learning aid, for example chemistry >> periodic table >> carbon >> chemical bonding with a clear beginning and ending just like a table of contents in a regular school book. It would be an extension of the current article assessment effort but in the proposed scheme every article would have a next Article bit. I am thinking of extending the See also section with previous article and next article sections. Well just a thought... V8rik 22:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I think at WP:1.0 we are hoping to work with WikiProjects next year to release collections like this - something along the lines of a WikiReader - the Germans have already done some of this. My dream is one day to see our WP:Chem worklist published in book form. Once we get everything up to B-Class or better? And eventually we could produce an affordable version of EROS and e-EROS? Walkerma 01:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
The Wikiversity effort is something that I suspect will take some time before things settle down. I don't think it would be a repeat of Wikipedia or Wikibooks - I think of the Wikiversity as more like the Wikipedia:Reference desk, except many times larger, more cohesive, and more focused. More a bit later... --HappyCamper 16:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Uranium trioxide gas (continued)

(continued from #Uranium above)

There is no question that the combustion of uranium results in the production of uranium trioxide gas, for the following reasons:

  • Dr. Carl Alexander at Battelle, with over 45 years of experience on the subject (he was a coauthor of the Ackermann et al (1960) paper on UO3 gas, and the sole author of another pertinent paper last year) agrees that it does. You can reach Dr. Alexander at +1-614-424-5233 or at the email address obscurely indicated in the "From:" line below. Here is a copy of his first email to me:
Subject:  RE: uranium combustion produces how much UO3(g)?
Date:     Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:31:15 -0400
From:     Alexander, Carl A (alexandc at BATTELLE dot ORG)
To:       James Salsman (james at bovik dot org)

I would expect that gaseous UO3 would be the major product of
such “burning” in air. I consulted and reviewed Wendell Wilson’s
paper prior to publication so I am familiar with it although I
haven’t seen it in a good many years. I don’t know the health hazard
of gaseous UO3 but chemically it behaves a lot like WO3 and WO3 is
certainly a bad actor. Gaseous UO3 is quite stable and you are
correct that upon condensing it would likely become U3O8. 

-----Original Message-----
From:    James Salsman
Sent:    Thursday, April 20, 2006 4:11 PM
To:      Alexander, Carl A
Subject: uranium combustion produces how much UO3(g)?

Dear Dr. Alexander: 

Thank you for publishing your paper, "Volatilization of urania
under strongly oxidizing conditions," which I recently read
with great interest.  I have been trying to determine the amount
of UO3(g) produced from combustion of uranium.  I have recently
been corresponding with the famous coordination chemist Prof.
Simon Cotton, who suggested that I contact you with my question....

(moved text deleted)

Please move talk to uranium trioxide. This is not an appropriate forum for this discussion.Olin 01:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Okay. Moved to Talk:Uranium trioxide#Discussion from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry. LossIsNotMore 03:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
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